Mobile Monday
Encyclopedia
MobileMonday is an open networking organisation for mobile industry professionals fostering cooperation and cross-border business development through virtual and live networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends from global markets. Founded in autumn 2000 in Helsinki
, Finland
, MobileMonday now has over 140 chapters worldwide, which host meetings on a selected Monday evening each month.
The original concept by Vesku Paananen was very simple to meet and discuss about mobility from different perspectives in an open, neutral and relaxed environment. A gathering contained three presentations in English. Typically one presentation was about business and non-technical, one more technical and one start-up company presentation. All presentations were 15 minutes long and after that was time for discussion. Vesku Paananen was the master of the one and half hour ceremony, but presentations of the evening were decided in the Mobile Monday board to make the venue as open as possible. Quickly the gatherings started to have a general topic that tied the presentations together like for example location based services. The presentations were distributed afterwards on MobileMonday.net website.
The gatherings started to be more and more popular and typically 80-150 people visited MobileMonday during the evening. In 2001 Vesku Paananen asked help from one of the biggest Finnish IT online media DigiToday to be the MobileMonday media partner. That increased the popularity in Finland. Peter Vesterbacka had an important role with his contacts to grow the MobileMonday network and expand it outside Finland. Peter, with the help of his employer HP Mobile E-Service Bazaar, organized the first international MobileMonday gathering during the 3GSM World congress in Cannes, France in February 2001. That was the beginning of infrequent international gatherings during various mobile events around the world in cities like Singapore, Cape Town, Beijing and Cannes in 2001, 2002 and 2003.
Helsinki
Helsinki is the capital and largest city in Finland. It is in the region of Uusimaa, located in southern Finland, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea. The population of the city of Helsinki is , making it by far the most populous municipality in Finland. Helsinki is...
, Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, MobileMonday now has over 140 chapters worldwide, which host meetings on a selected Monday evening each month.
The Early History
The seed of MobileMonday was sown during the Night of Arts of Helsinki in August 2000. That evening numerous members of the Finnish mobile scene gathered together in a party hosted by a fresh local mobile start-up Add2Phone. After that evening Vesa-Matti 'Vesku' Paananen started to plan and organize the first MobileMonday gathering and sent an invitation email to more than hundred of his contacts. The "MobileMonday" name was an original idea of Peter Vesterbacka, a Finnish mobile enthusiastic (currently CMO at Rovio). Finally the first gathering was held in Molly Malone’s an Irish pub on the first Monday of September in 2000. The number of participants in the first gathering was 57. About ten of them formed a MobileMonday board.The original concept by Vesku Paananen was very simple to meet and discuss about mobility from different perspectives in an open, neutral and relaxed environment. A gathering contained three presentations in English. Typically one presentation was about business and non-technical, one more technical and one start-up company presentation. All presentations were 15 minutes long and after that was time for discussion. Vesku Paananen was the master of the one and half hour ceremony, but presentations of the evening were decided in the Mobile Monday board to make the venue as open as possible. Quickly the gatherings started to have a general topic that tied the presentations together like for example location based services. The presentations were distributed afterwards on MobileMonday.net website.
The gatherings started to be more and more popular and typically 80-150 people visited MobileMonday during the evening. In 2001 Vesku Paananen asked help from one of the biggest Finnish IT online media DigiToday to be the MobileMonday media partner. That increased the popularity in Finland. Peter Vesterbacka had an important role with his contacts to grow the MobileMonday network and expand it outside Finland. Peter, with the help of his employer HP Mobile E-Service Bazaar, organized the first international MobileMonday gathering during the 3GSM World congress in Cannes, France in February 2001. That was the beginning of infrequent international gatherings during various mobile events around the world in cities like Singapore, Cape Town, Beijing and Cannes in 2001, 2002 and 2003.